Blaming People of Color for Billionaires’ Losses

Reporting on a trend he’s seen “laid out almost daily on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, in the National Review, and on the campaign trail,” Slate‘s Daniel Gross quotes Neil Cavuto of the Fox Business Channel: “I don’t remember a clarion call that said: Fannie and Freddie are a disaster. Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster.” Gross’ incredulous response (10/7/08):

Let me get this straight. Investment banks and insurance companies run by centimillionaires blow up, and it’s the fault of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and poor minorities? These arguments are generally made by people who read the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and ignore the rest of the paper–economic know-nothings whose opinions are informed mostly by ideology and, occasionally, by prejudice.

[…] head Paul Jay shares his personal vision (10/12/08) of how it takes crises like the the current financial state to jar corporate media into allowing us to “hear… words like capitalism and socialism in the […]